John Bowe

01/29/2026

New in CNBC: what NOT to say if you want people to actually listen.

Being easy to talk to is a learnable communication skill, says public speaking expert John Bowe. By avoiding common phrases that shut people down, you can build stronger relationships and increase your influence at work and in life.

05/07/2025

Learn to speak with confidence in just one morning—without breaking the bank

Learn the single most helpful skill for business and social life--for $250.

I’m offering a live, half-day workshop for 10 participants only, May 22, 9am to 1pm. Location TBD near Union Square or FIDI.
The workshop is interactive and tailored to your real-world needs. Whether you’re presenting to clients, leading internal meetings, pitching new ideas or delivering updates and reports (live or virtually), you’ll leave with tools you can use immediately and grow with over time.

What you’ll learn:

How to focus and simplify your thoughts before any meeting or presentation to achieve maximum relevance, impact, and brevity.

How to connect with your audience from the moment you begin speaking.

Storytelling—and other ways to maintain the flow and hold your audience’s attention.

Writing for the ear (not the page).

How to avoid data overload and design a deck that keeps your audience awake.

How to conclude with power-- and other secrets of persuasion.

These simple techniques aren’t about acting or pretending to be confident. They’re critical and technical skills you can repeat again and again. When you see and feel how well they work, you’ll indeed become a confident speaker. You’ll know forever how to explain your ideas with clarity, authority, and confidence.

So why is the workshop only $250 (a fraction of the normal price)? The session will be videotaped. I will never use your name, but I hope to use the video for marketing purposes, to show what my workshops are like. Not so terrible.

Notes: there will be a brief pre-workshop homework assignment and a very brief pre-workshop reading.

Payment required in advance—Zelle, Venmo, PayPal accepted.
DM to reserve your spot and receive an invoice with payment information.

John Bowe is a speech and presentation coach whose clients include Forvis Mazars, UBS, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Wells Fargo, Amazon, and many others. He has contributed to or appeared on CNBC, the NY Times, the New Yorker, The Daily Show, the BBC, and many others.

05/02/2025

How should you react when people are rude to you? Read my CNBC article about a 5-word response that stops them in their tracks.

When we encounter a rude person, our first instinct might be to fire back with a snarky comment. But that's not the right move, says public speaking expert John Bowe. Here's the perfect response to instantly shut down rude behavior.

02/04/2025

“What does it mean to ‘connect with the audience’ in a financial presentation?”

The idea of “connecting with your audience” often sounds a bit woo woo or abstract. Learn what it means in simple terms for a typical finance (or any other) presentation.

A quick excerpt from Mastering the Art of Confident Presentations, with myself and speech expert Joe Dolce, hosted by executive coach Bruce Eckfeldt

01/12/2025

See you here tomorrow at 12:15 pm EST:

Looking for free help with public speaking?

I'm excited to team up live with leadership coach Bruce Eckfeldt and fellow presentation expert Joe Dolce this Monday, Jan 13 at 12:15 EST.

We'll focus on simple strategies for conveying your ideas with authority, learning to connect with any audience, and shedding speech anxiety once and for all.

Presenting with confidence is a critical skill in today’s professional world. Whether pitching an idea, leading a meeting, or delivering a keynote, the ability to communicate effectively and with poise can significantly impact your success. This session explores key aspects of impactful presenting...

01/01/2025

For New Years, I’m going to redouble my efforts to prevent my clients from using the phrase, “best in class.”

I’m sorry, but it sounds mindless—at least, in the context of finance or any other executive context. For starters, it’s vague (“What class? Wait, is this a dog show?”). It’s also trendy and overused in a way that conveys the opposite of gravitas and judgment.

If your primary goal is (for example) to persuade investors to trust you with millions of dollars, you need to be present, smart, thoughtful, and above all, sensible. Jargon-y words and phrases make you seem trivial, robotic, and inexact, destroying the perception that you’re communicating authentically. Don’t reward your audience’s time and attention with vapid, robotic presentation habits.

Next time you’re tempted to say, “best in class,” trying saying, "first-rate," "premier," or even the lazier (but more authentic) choices, “great” or “amazing.” Better yet, explain why the thing you’re talking about is so superior.

Example: “We’re really excited to roll out our new AI blah blah blah software. It’s 4 times faster than the old software, and 6 times faster than the next 3 competitors. It will save you all 31 minutes of reading time every week.”

I know “best in class” competes with dozens of other vapid, jargon-y phrases like “going forward" (or worse, “on a going-forward basis”), "seamless," “risk-adjusted returns,” “convexity,” “down/side protected,” and many others. But my second NY’s resolution is to be tolerant and accepting—and focus my opprobrium on one verbal transgression at a time.

12/10/2024

A year ago, I published an op-ed in the NYT, proposing a cheap fix for all kinds of political and mental health problems: let’s bring speech and rhetorical training back into middle and high school. The piece explored how learning the art of persuasion and verbal engagement –-as taught for 2000 years, beginning in Ancient Greece-- could help overcome the challenges of disconnection faced by young people today.

I see now that the piece could easily have been addressed to virtually anyone working in finance. In a world driven by increasing amounts of data, where professionals are expected to explain complex financial products, strategies, and policies, the ability to communicate clearly and persuasively is more crucial than ever. Analysts need to be able to distill complex financial concepts into understandable, actionable narratives. Decision-makers need optimized information to separate the wheat from the chaff. From junior to senior to sales and IR, finance professionals who can engage in thoughtful, transparent discourse will gain the trust of investors, regulators, and the public.

But it’s not happening if everyone drones on and on and on in robot-speak because they’re untrained in the art of distilling and packaging ideas in palatable form.

For 2000 years, speech and rhetorical training was the cornerstone of education. In the last 2-3 centuries, it has become uncool, thanks in part to science. Ironically, now, we’re drowning in data. We’ve become so technically smart we can hardly explain the stuff we’re working on.

The lack of formal rhetoric training in education means many professionals in finance are missing this essential skill. It’s costing everyone lots of money, and making our work lives less fun than they should be.

To learn more, read article on NYT:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/27/opinion/disconnection-polarization-speech.html

11/19/2024

The Cost of Bad Information Flow

Decision-makers: if you value your time, optimize your information flow.

As Lee Ainslie, former head of Maverick Capital once said, “At the end of the day, businesses are run by people who are evaluating other people.”

Your role as a partner, portfolio manager, etc, consists of absorbing reports, information, recommendations, and so on, then making the best decisions you can. Every year there are more and better sources of information-- analytical tools, metrics, ever-more granular forms of measuring this and that. What gets lost is higher-level thinking about how to improve the communication and interpretation of all this data.

Ainslie tells about a period when Maverick’s returns declined. No one understood why. An analysis found that the firm was picking great equities but trading them in the wrong amounts. What eventually emerged was that within the firm, some analysts were much better than others at presenting information. Portfolio managers were responding to their reports and insights more consistently and vigorously than to their peers who presented information less effectively—even when their ideas were just as good. The PMs were believing the best communicators, rather than acting on the best ideas. The waste of time and money (all those meetings!) is painful to imagine. And it happens every day.

This kind of asymmetry, or sub-optimal information flow, costs almost nothing to fix –if only one steps back from the smog of data and thinks about information flow with a clear eye. Critical thinking about information is every bit as important as information itself.

I posted a while back about the similarity between communication and IT. You’d never try to run a business with bad IT. Why not optimize decision-making by optimizing communication within your chain of command? If every meeting is shorter and better focused, everyone’s energies and insights are better utilized.

10/23/2024

Pleased to associate in any way with the NYPL.
Free and really helpful for anyone who has to pitch, present, lead meetings, etc.

Sign up ➡ https://www.eventbrite.com/e/master-the-art-of-public-speaking-and-presentation-registration-1038862885857

10/22/2024

Is your slide deck supporting your message—or stealing the spotlight? 📊✨

On I Need A Speaker, I share game-changing tips on creating impactful presentations that put you at the center of the conversation.

Don't miss these insights on avoiding common mistakes and connecting with different audiences! Learn more ➡ https://www.ineedaspeaker.com/speech-and-presentation-expert-john-bowe-author-of-i-have-something-to-say-mastering-the-art-of-public-speaking-in-an-age-of-disconnection/